If Ben Bernanke and the fools at the Fed actually thought the industrial economy was recovering, they’d jack up interest rates. When the prime rate is up around 5%, you’ll know the industrial economy is back on track. Alternatively, you can monitor the extinction rate of non-human species.

The world’s first peak-oil recession has come to a close, according to third-quarter numbers invented by the federal government. Apparently flooding big banks, insurance companies, and automobile manufacturers with fiat currency interrupted the plummeting descent of American Empire. The stock markets skyrocketed expectedly. Predictably, so did the commodities markets.

The property of rich folks has always been more important than the lives of the poor, a fact that will continue to create misery for the “other” 99% of us until the entire industrial economy fails. Personally, I can hardly wait.

I was among the final baby boomers born in the United States. Along with my entire generation, I owe the world an apology. My generation abandoned a worthy dream, and it will cost all of us, but nobody more than civilized members of industrial society.

Your medical doctor informs you: “You need to stop all industrial activities immediately, or you’ll be dead in twenty years. And so will your five-year-old child. You might die anyway — after all, nobody gets out alive — but your death is guaranteed if you do not stop relying on fossil fuels for travel, heating and cooling, drinking water out the tap, and buying food from the grocery store.”
Naturally, you go straight from the clinic to the nearest store. You need liquor, and time to ponder whether the trade-off is worth it.

Evolution demands short-term thinking focused on individual survival. Most attempts to overcome our evolutionarily hardwired absorption with self are selected against. The Overman is dead, killed by a high-fat diet and unwillingness to exercise. Reflexively, we follow him into the grave.